Article courtesy of Staff of Dawn Doering | April 7th, 2016 | ABC Newspapers | Shared as educational material. In Minnesota, the state administers the Clean Water Act permitting program to clean up water pollution. This program is known as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, which has been around since 1972. For those that […]

Article courtesy of James F. McCarty, The Plain Dealer | April 30th, 2016 | Cleveland.com | Shared as educational material. The Ohio EPA and the City Water Department have caught sight of a heap of toxic sediment lying at the bottom of Lake Erie, moving ever so closer to the pipes that supply drinking water […]

In the 1980s, the EPA conducted a Nationwide Urban Runoff Program study to determine the extent to which urban runoff contributed to water quality problems and to evaluate practices for controlling urban runoff. The NURP study recommended that urban stormwater runoff be added to the list of environmental issues which require controls to protect water quality.

The final rule is the result of extensive consultation with the public, local communities, state agencies, federal agencies, businesses, farmers, fishermen, tribes, and conservation groups, including American Rivers. The final Clean Water Protection Rule simultaneously addresses the concerns of stakeholders while also providing important protections for streams and wetlands across the United States.

The Waters of the United States rule, developed by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers, offers protection to two million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands that, until now, were not clearly designated under the Clean Water Act.

Conservation groups have filed initial paperwork to sue the Tennessee Valley Authority, contending that harmful pollutants have been seeping from 55-year-old coal ash storage ponds at the Gallatin power plant and into drinking water. The groups say that TVA violated the Clean Water Act by allowing pollutants such as arsenic and cadmium into the Cumberland River and other surface and groundwater sources near the coal-fired power plant.

A coalition of local and national public interest organizations have asked a federal court for permission to participate in a legal action that will decide when Clean Water Act restrictions apply to the release of pollutants in animal manure into local waterways used for recreation, drinking and to support nearby communities

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Justice, and the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) announced today a comprehensive Clean Water Act settlement with the city of Jackson, Miss. Jackson has agreed to make improvements to its sewer systems to eliminate unauthorized overflows of untreated raw sewage and unauthorized bypasses of treatment at the Savanna Street Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), the city’s largest wastewater treatment facility. When wastewater systems overflow, they can release untreated sewage and other pollutants into local waterways, threatening water quality and contributing to beach closures and disease outbreaks.

When the United States’ landmark Clean Water Act (CWA) was signed into law in 1972, the nation’s waterways and coastlines were in crisis. Oily debris in the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, had notoriously caught fire several times.